George prefers his history accurate, animals obscure, and costumes ornate. He has a wide streak of humor, a deep love of family, and a strong affinity for purple. He also has Tourette syndrome (primary: gross motor) and OCD. At the start of fourth grade we began exploring his love of learning at home. This website serves as an occasional showcase of what we cover. Thoughtful recommendations and reflections welcome.

Thursday, September 12, 2013

Go, Joe!

In addition to all the boring horrible math, this week we did have a fun combination of cinema history (George's current self-selected special area of study) and biology. We made a smaller, more easily changed zeotrope and then designed an experiment to see if more pictures/openings on the zeotrope added up to a better animation simulation.

Then George wanted to try other colors to see if painting the zeotrope's exterior a different color, say... purple, would make for better animation. It did not, and he has posited that black is better because it's more like what your eyelids do when you blink.

Above is a Google animation of some of the photos we took for our smaller zeotrope. When all the photos are in the zeotrope and spin, it looks like the world's most cheerful GI Joe doing cartwheels.